I Impressed the Heck Out of My Kids

Last night I had one of those cooking experiences that thankfully comes along pretty rarely.

I decided to make goulash and spaetzle, a Hungarian/German meal that we had a lot growing up. I got the meat cut up with onions and paprika, browning in a pan and smelling so good. But when I squeezed the garlic through the press, it came out all dark brown and disgusting smelling. The cloves weren't soft, the head of garlic looked fine--but it wasn't fine! So I fished out the pieces of meat that were "contaminated", and added garlic powder instead.

I usually make homemade rolls for Sunday dinner, but I decided to do crescent rolls from a can because we don't get out of church until 5:00 and if I make them ahead of time they mysteriously disappear long before dinner is done. As the goulash was cooking, I popped the rolls in the oven to cook. But somehow my hand must have bumped the temperature dial and it was on 200 instead of 375. So the rolls didn't cook. I put them in longer at the right temperature, but they looked a little funny. No matter. They're still edible. But I stopped paying attention long enough that the goulash burned on the bottom. Not great, but we could just not eat those pieces of meat.

Then I made the spaetzle, and as I was draining the noodles in the colander, it tipped into the sink and half the batch went right down the drain. Poor Kitty Boy felt so bad for me. He fixed his plate of dinner, and as he reached for a roll all his goulash slipped off the plate right onto the floor. At this point I was laughing (seriously). I cleaned it up, started on a second batch of spaetzle, when we heard a crash in the pantry and a huge bag of chocolate chips from Costco fell off a shelf and spilled all over the floor.

Now we were all laughing. Well, Sweetie wasn't because he wasn't in the kitchen when everything else had happened before. Tinkerbell and I had hot dogs, and there was enough decent goulash and spaetzle for the others. Nothing like a warm fuzzy Sunday dinner!

And throughout the entire ordeal, not one swear word left my lips. I pointed this fact out to the kids, and they were most impressed. Kitty Boy even thanked me.